


Territorial

by little_abyss



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Action/Adventure, Backstory, Charger's 'Interesting Jobs', Developing Relationship, F/F, Group dynamics, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 00:55:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6064726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_abyss/pseuds/little_abyss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a new girl joins the Chargers, Dalish can't help wondering that age old question - "Do I want to kiss her, or punch her?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Territorial

**Author's Note:**

  * For [serenityfails](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenityfails/gifts).



There’s a new girl just joined the Chargers.  A quiet, hard little thing, pricklier than rashvine, all dark eyes and dark hair and dark mind.  It’s weird to have another girl with them - it’s been just her and the boys for such a long time Dalish doesn’t even think about any more.  Good weird, she supposes, if she could only figure out if she wants to kiss her or punch her.  Chief had found her running from the local guard on their last jaunt through Val Chevin, and here she is.  Moaning again, leaning forward on the log on the other side of the fire as she argues at Grim, who is keeping his face studiously blank.  

 

Dalish can’t resist it.  Her knife stills for a moment on the feather she’s preparing - if you’re gonna pose as an archer, you better know something about fletching at least - and she rolls her eyes and smirks. “Mm, yeah, must of been hard.  All that big city living…”

The new girl glowers at her, dark eyebrows contracting.  The light of the fire dances in her eyes as she snaps, “When you’ve eaten out of garbage, you let me know.  Some shems are too good for the knife.”

 

Dalish’s smile broadens and she laughs.  “Garbage! With actual food in it!  And Orlesian food at that!” She means it as a joke, making light of shit as usual.  After she’d found the new girl pissing in a bush not three paces away from camp, she’s been giving her the mocks about marking territory, and she knows the girl loathes it, but... Sure, she’s vicious enough, and good with a blade.  Dalish’d never question the Chief’s judgement on that shit, but seriously?  New girl knows little and less about life outside a city.  She continues, “Would have thought a city would be a great place to forage.  All those lovely middens, just ripe for the picking over.  Sounds luxurious when you compare it to elfroot stew and elfroot bread and pickled elfroot and elfroot a la Fereldene and elfroo…”

The new girl sneers, pretty as a shining blade.  “You know nothing about it,  _ Dalish _ .  All your fancy talk about hunting and Mythal this-and-that, you still judge us for living in the city.  But when our people leave the alienage to find you fuckin’ Dalish,  _ Dalish _ , they’re rejected and sent back to throw themselves on the mercy of the guard, like as not.  I was just carving out a place for us to have a little room.”

 

Dalish sighs and puts down the knife and feather.  She can feel her hands begin to tingle at the new girl’s words; but mostly because she knows they’re right, and suddenly, things don’t seem so funny any more.  It’s the longest speech she’s heard from new girl yet, but that doesn’t mean she likes her any better.  “You enjoyed it, and that’s obvious.  You weren’t killing shems out of any kind of misguided sense of elven solidarity, or kinship toward your fellows in the alienage.  You were doing it because it felt good.  Don’t pretend otherwise.”

 

The firelight ripples across the new girl’s face.  Charger custom means you don’t get a name until Chief asks you what it is, and he hasn’t asked her yet. So new girl is  _ new girl _ , at least for the time being.  And isn’t she beautiful, with her dark eyes ablaze with indignation and her self-righteousness and her pride?  With her scars that speak of hardship in a way her voice never could?  Dalish smirks, and the new girl scowls at her as Grim gets up, taking the silence as his cue to get the fuck out as fast as he can.  “I hate you,” new girl tells her, and Dalish shrugs.  

“Doesn’t matter.  We work together now.  If you’re gonna stab me one night, just wait until the Chief’s got a…”  _ Replacement _ , she thinks, but it still stings, that one.  Nothing like being rejected in favour of someone else to make you rethink all your life decisions.  So for once in her life, she shuts her mouth, looks at her lap and takes up the knife again.  She can feel new girl’s eyes upon her, and wonders.

 

-|||-

 

“Krem!   _ Krem! _ ” Dalish screams across the field, and tamps her staff into the earth at her feet.  The Fade swells and recedes around her, and she uses her opposing hand to manipulate fire from it and send it arcing into the nearest sylvan.  The tree screams as if it is echoing her cry, its leaves and lower branches alight, and stumbles into Rocky’s carefully laid trap, becoming a heaving mass of flame.  Dalish would laugh - back with the clan this was something she would have done for fun, albeit not with such large numbers of the semi-sentient trees - but she’s too concerned with the fact that she can’t see Krem any more.   Has he fallen?  The scene is chaos, fire everywhere, and Dread Wolf take her, but she can’t find Krem, she can’t see him, and these fucking squirrels are everywhere, getting underfoot.  “Krem!” she screams again, and the Chief booms out, over the noise of the trees and the fire, “I got him!  Get the ones in the back, Dalish!  New girl needs you!”

 

It isn’t in Dalish to disobey that voice.  She sprints, hair flying behind her, sweat making her jerkin stick to her body, staff held aloft.  The heat, Mythal’s mercy, it is so intense.  She narrowly dodges a flaming branch, and runs harder.  But there’s new girl now, fighting hard against an adult sylvan, who brings a branch crashing down as Dalish watches, only missing the girl by the slimmest of margins.  And… Fenhedis lasa!  She  _ climbs _ it, new girl leaps up as the branch begins to ascend again, scurrying up the living wood with a short dagger in one hand and the other clutched between her teeth.  “New girl!” Dalish yells, but the fire is too loud, or the girl is too determined, because she doesn’t even look around, just keeps climbing.  The tree seems to sense it, begins to whip its branches about, the motion similar to that of a large dog trying to rid itself of a tiny, irritating insect.  But new girl just clings tighter, she’s at the trunk now, right in the heart of the tree, and Dalish sees her take both daggers in hand and begin hacking at the trunk.  She shakes her head, admiring the determination, but knows the blows will be ineffective on a tree of that size.  

 

So she anchors herself, pulling from the great well of magic within her, all around her, and whirls the staff over her head.  The crystal in it glows ever brighter, and when she feels the base forces within the Fade around her peak, she slams the stave into the earth, grunting with the effort.  A fissure opens up as the ground quakes beneath her feet, and it travels in a line from the point of her staff to the sylvan.  The fissure opens ever wider, the sylvans roots are exposed, and the tree loses its footing, begins to tip.  “New girl!  Jump!” Dalish yells, and the new girl hears her this time, because she does, pushing out and free of the tangled and tangling branches.  The fissure yaws wider, exposing the roots further, and the tree collapses.  She is tiring, her mana almost sapped entirely, but Dalish grins and manages a little more flame.  “Don’t get too hot and bothered,” she laughs and flings the fireball at the sylvan.  She grins as she watches it burn for a moment, and then turns her eyes to the new girl.  

 

The new girl scowls and sheaths her weapons.  There is a huge gash on her thigh and she is covered in leaves and dirt and sweat.  The battle is dying now, along with the flames; Dalish hears the Chief’s laughter and Krem’s protesting voice.  “What did you do that for?  I had it,” new girl tells her and then stalks away.  Dalish watches her retreating back, sees the hunch of the shoulders and the limp that means the gash goes deeper even than it looks, and yells at her back, “A thank you would be nice!”

 

-|||-

 

Surprisingly, their injuries are not that bad.  The Chief reckons they’ll go back to Verchiel tomorrow, collect the payment for the job.  “Never thought I’d get into landscaping for nobles,” Stitches snickers and Dalish grins at him.  

“You think you’d make a career of it?  Like that better than surgeoning, do you?”

He laughs, shakes his head.  “Not on your life.  The only thing entertaining about that job was watching Krem’s reaction when those fucking squirrels came out…”

“Fuck off,” Krem growls from the other side of the fire.  “Nothing funny about flaming rodents.”  He turns to Dalish, offering her the packet of hard tack.  She takes it and breaks a piece in half, sighing.  He grins and says, “Saw you and new girl.  That was some team work.”

 

Dalish shrugs, though privately she wonders what the new girl contributed.  “Not every day I get to save one of our own guys.  ‘Specially not in such a dramatic fashion.”

“Yeah,” Krem says, and smiles.  “Usually it’s only every  _ second _ day.  Or…” And here his smile widens and he cheekily asks, “Or did you mean not every day you get to save someone so pretty?”

Dalish makes a face at him and chucks the piece of tack at his head.  “Gimme a break.”  She laughs, though she’s rather annoyed that he’s guessed it, “I’m not going near Stabby McStabs.  Little bit too pointy for my liking.”

Krem nods as if he does not believe her, and she supposes he’s right not to.  She’s going there, or she’s going to try to, Stabby or not.

 

The next day, new girl gets her name.  They’re three days off the border when they encounter a group of merchants, their fat donkeys and fatter arses giving them away.  A couple of dwarves and more humans - light guard, nothing spectacular.  Dalish pulls the hood on her cloak up over her head, not that they’ll bother looking at her.  Chief draws most of the stares - and who could blame them?  Qunari are rare this far south, viewed with a mixture of mistrust and vague hostility, which the Chief rapidly deflects with his manner.  Still, caution is a hard trait to unlearn, so she lowers her eyes and thinks innocuous thoughts.  That is, until she hears new girl behind her muttering, like a litany, “Fucking shem, fucking shem, fucking shem…”

 

“Hold up there, new girl,” Dalish mutters and drives her hip across as she walks so that - bop! - it smacks flatly into the hip of the new girl.  Girl glares at her, but at least her muttering stops.  “You wanna skin ‘em and eat ‘em, or whatever it is that you do, you do it on your own time, when the rest of us don’t have to cop the flack.  We’re a good unit, with a rep to protect.  Don’t need you going all I-Am-Fen’Harel’s-Righteous-Hand-of-Fury on us.”

 

The carts are drawing level, pushing the Chargers off their paths.  As Dalish and new girl walk carefully among the bracken at the side of the path, new girl says quietly, “I know.  Just hate to have ‘em so close.”  Her voice is a rumble, smooth yet full of tension, like wading through a fast flowing stream.  Dalish shifts a little as it does peculiar things to her; makes her want to reach out and protect this girl, to push her up against a tree in front of Mythal and everyone, hear what she sounds like when she comes.  Her lips pull up into a little smile, and she asks, “Yeah.  But you’ll be seein’ plenty of shemlen.  And some of them will be paying you to stab other shem, so… it’s not all bad.  Mostly Chief and Krem go to collect anyway, we stay in an inn or outside the town.  Less hassle that way.”

New girl grunts, then looks at Dalish, and the dappling of the sunlight through the leaves makes her skin glow luminous in patches.  Darkness and light play over her burnished skin, her black hair, her dark eyes, full of worry.  Dalish stares back, and the strange sensation of wanting to act but not knowing how is back, heavier, hotter and more oppressive than ever.  New girl opens her mouth and mutters, “I… don’t even have a name yet.  Well, I do, but…” she sighs and frowns horribly, then asks, reluctantly, “Do you think Chief will keep me on?”

 

“Shit yeah.  Look, you could stand to loosen up on the attitude a bit,”  _ Not too much, Mythal forbid you lose that fire, that fire’s what I like, the fire that drives you onward _ , Dalish thinks and then continues, “But you’re good at what you do.  He’ll ask you what it is sooner or later.  Just…”  

“I’m not holding out on a just in case,” new girl says, and she looks bereft, lost, “It’s just… I got…” She sneers suddenly, looks at Dalish angrily then tells her, “Forget it,” and walks away, up the path further.  She almost reaches Rocky and Grim, struggling with the sapper’s equipment, and then she hangs back.   _ Poor kid _ , Dalish thinks, and almost laughs. The girl is peculiar, no doubt about it.  As if Chief’d ever get rid of someone as weird and troubled as that.  

 

They make it to the outskirts of Verchiel by nightfall.  It’s a funny little place, right on the edge of the Dales, and Dalish always feels a bit odd being here.  Way she was taught, the Dales is disputed territory, but nobody else seems to feel that way.  She wonders if there would ever be an elven separatist movement again, or another figure like Shartan to pull city elves and Dalish elves together.  _ Probably not _ , she thinks, and is surprised by the bitterness in the thought.  But here they are, making fires, putting up their shelters, spitting the chickens that Stitches had liberated from a flock as they’d passed through a little village.  Chief had appeared not to notice, though Krem had looked rather disapproving when Stitches’d held up the two little corpses and said, “I found them like this!  Honest!”  Dalish chuckles at the thought.

 

-|||-

 

Their bellies are full of stolen bird, and they’ve sung all the songs and smoked and drunk their fill.  The sickle moon peers balefully down from overhead, and the stars are points of brightness in the otherwise deep velvet of the night.  Everything is quiet apart from the crackle of the fire when Chief asks, softly, “Hey, new girl.  What’s your name?”

New girl stretches, blinks sleepily in the firelight.  It’s a ruse, even Dalish can tell it, but she likes the cool veneer that this girl possesses, the fact that she’s not rushing the moment.  From the corner of her eye she sees the boys beaming at each other, and at the new girl, as everyone sits up a little straighter, waiting, wondering what she will chose.  

 

The silence becomes more pregnant, potent and weighted with history.  Dalish feels the slip of time, the turn of the earth on its axis and smiles slightly as the new girl says, her voice calm, deliberate as she looks at Dalish, rather than the Chief - “Skinner.  That’s my name.”

“Skinner,” Chief says, as if from very far away, “Welcome to the Chargers.”

And the boys all cheer, and rise to swarm around Skinner to welcome her to the group in their own way.  Dalish waits, and watches, and smiles, knowing now that there will be plenty of time, remembering the look in those dark eyes, the shine of the fire in that dark hair, but only able to guess at what lies within the mind, which is perhaps not so dark after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Wintersend, serenityfails! I hope you like this; your prompts were all doozies, but I never miss a chance to wonder about some Charger's back stories.


End file.
